


What Could Have Been

by amanda_jolene



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: AU, F/M, Gen, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 20:40:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1997067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amanda_jolene/pseuds/amanda_jolene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: How do you think 2x7 would go? NOT LIAM FRIENDLY.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Could Have Been

She reckons all girls have these nerves before their first time. 

The lights went out and so did her cool façade and he’s pulling her in by the hem of her top. Hands, her own, move to pull the material off her body but she hears his chuckle in the dark. “Weren’t you the one saying we weren’t oil paintings?”

“Just repeating what you said,” her voice is small. She wants him to deny it, to tell her that she misunderstood the way she had misunderstood things with Chloe sometimes. 

“Well, we’re both smart then. Don’t need to take your top off to fuck, you know.” 

This isn’t how she imagined her first time playing out. His lips felt sticky against hers, his hands clumsy against her. He yanks his own pants down and mumbles something along the lines of “Well, off with them then.” 

She should be lost in the moment, on fire, but all she can think about is how soft Finn’s lips were when he kissed her wet, how his fingers had been gentle but insistent, how his fingertips pushed into her as a question, only gaining strength when he found the answer in her gasp (she also thinks of his gasp, the one her puffed against her neck and how she wasn’t touching him but that didn’t seem to matter). 

Liam has already scratched her. Twice. Once on her leg when he was pulling her sock off and her hip just now as he was trying to pull her tights and underwear down (he had taken it upon himself to undress her lower half when she didn’t move). “Come on, now. Stop being frigid.” 

That makes her think of Chloe. Chloe who let men do to her what Rae was going to let Liam do. Be a stand in for his hand for the night. Which makes her cry and with the tears comes the memory of summer and the love caravan and how Finn had went to all the trouble to make her feel special, wanted and he didn’t expect anything in return. 

He’s impatient. Sighs and stops tugging at her clothes. “For fuck’s sake. Are you really being mental right now?”

How can she possibly answer through the shudders of her breath? She couldn’t tell him how when she pulled away from Finn that his eyes had went soft and he asked her if she was ok. She can’t tell him how when she feigned a headache, he had given her a shot of vodka and put her to bed, camping out on the couch by himself. 

“Are we doing this or not?” Liam asks. “Are we together? You wanted this, remember?” 

She nods but she doesn’t remember signing up for this. She doesn’t remember where her fantasies of gladiators, where those moments of bliss wrapped up in the arms of a boy who played her soft songs had transformed into a shaking knees and uncertainty. Was she really trading that for this? 

“How about some music, then?” (If he can’t hear her cries, closes his eyes against her tears, then it’s not real.)

He plays crap FM radio and a song is ending, the DJ announcing the next and she doesn’t catch the name but a shrill sound sends her heart racing. Spaceman I always wanted you to go and if she wasn’t really crying before, her chest is heaving now and she’s sure she’s having a panic attack but there’s nothing flat enough for her to put her hands on because Finn is in Leeds and there’s too many miles in between and until she can touch his face, this feeling is going to stay. 

“It’s, uh, a crap song but I don’t think-“

“It’s not a crap song!” Her voice comes out as a shout. “Don’t you dare say that! This song… this song… he’s so crap with words, he said that himself. He doesn’t know how to flirt and he thinks this was funny and it was. He’s so terrible with words but he’s said so much to me but I’m fucking deaf, don’t you understand?” 

Liam doesn’t speak, eyes wide. He’s backing away from her because she’s struggling into her shoes, not bothering with her socks. “And I thought I was mental.” 

It’s not until she’s stood and has her bag clutched in her shaky hands that she looks him dead in the eye. “We all have stuff. He tried to tell me that but I get it now and some of us let go of that stuff and some of us are buried with it.” 

He’s winding up to say something hateful. Something to flatten her so she’ll know that he’s right when he says they can’t change. But she shakes her head at him. “Someone’s in love with me, Liam, and I have to go.” 

“What the fuck is love, Rae? You think, what? Life is better with someone asshole who pretends he cares about more than pumping a load in you? Love is nothing.” 

“Not to you.” She backs away from him then, moving to the door. “I feel sorry for you, Liam.” 

She down the stairs before she hears the clatter of cds and books falling on the ground, his voice tilting and jarring as he screams his rage after her and she figures she had been deaf to Kester, too, but now she understood the warning in his eyes. 

Her feet and heart know the course and she’s glad because she can’t see, can’t really breathe. How had she been so stupid? How could she have missed the galaxies in his kiss, the soft honey of his eyes? How had she been so blind to his feelings? How had she let things get so out of control?

“I don’t even like myself,” she says out loud and the words sound like Liam and she clutches her chest because she is quite possibly having a heart attack. “But I can start liking me. I can. I will.”   
She’s got a list going in her head of things that need to be fixed. Chloe was first and it wasn’t just rescuing Chloe, it wasn’t just making her better, it was repairing their friendship because both of them had torn each other apart and put each other up on impossibly high pedestals. And her mum, oh God, her mum. Why was she so awful to her mum? She didn’t mean anything she ever said. Didn’t mean to make her worry or cry. Linda had put her first for so many years and now it was time for her to be front and center and Rae had acted like a total bitch. 

Then there was the gang. Summer was over, she could feel the chill in the air, but it didn’t mean the summer of their friendship had to end. It didn’t mean a mistake between Chop and Izzy couldn’t be fixed. It didn’t mean there couldn’t be bridges rebuilt between Chop and Archie… and it didn’t mean Finn was gone for good. 

Archie’s glass are crooked. “Rae? Are you ok?” 

She quit crying a while ago but she still shakes her head because she wouldn’t be ok, the panic wouldn’t subside until she could put her hands on the flat, stable surface of Finn’s kindness and gentleness and love. “I need Finn’s number.” 

“I don’t-“

“Don’t fuck with me Archie. This is important.” 

He hands over the numbers reluctantly, twice snatching them away. “Don’t hurt him, Rae. Not again.” 

“I’m not,” she’s shaking. “I need to call him now and then we have to talk, ok?” 

There’s a half dozen rings and then a voice she doesn’t know answering and she’s trying to not hyperventilate into the phone when she says, “I need Finn.” It’s the truest thing she’s said in a long time. She does need Finn. 

“Hello?” He’s groggy and there’s a tiredness in his voice that makes her throat close. “Hello?” 

“Finn, I-“

“Rae?” 

“I am so, so sorry.” And she sobbing again and Archie, who had been trying to give her privacy around the corner, swoops in and nearly crawls into her lap, letting his arm engulf her. 

“Are you ok?” 

“I almost did something so stupid.”

There’s a sharp intake of air from both boys and Archie’s got her wrists, checking her eyes and Finn’s a bit frantic when he says, “Are you hurt?”

“No, no. I’m ok,” she tells them both, pulling away from Archie. “He said Spaceman was a stupid song and it’s not, Finn. It’s not a stupid song, I just didn’t understand until now what you’ve been trying to say.” 

“Rae…” He’s struggling for the words to say, to try and make sense of this late night phone call. “I don’t get it.”

“I’m sorry. That’s all you need to know. I am so, so sorry.”

“I’m coming for you, ok?” 

“No, don’t.” She wipes her eyes. “I’m coming for you this time. It’s my turn to chase you. I’ll be there tomorrow and then we have to get Chloe. I have to fix things.” 

“Rae… when will you understand that you don’t have to do everything alone? When will you get that?” He demands. “When will you finally start realizing that I’ve been waiting on you to tell me what to fix?” 

“I reckon now.” 

He’s silent and it’s killing her because she’s sure he’s going to hang up on her and she wouldn’t blame him a bit. “Tomorrow, then.” 

“Tomorrow,” she repeats. “Because when I said to be continued, I meant to be continued.” 

He’s not here but his laughter is the flat surface she needs right now. “I meant it, too. We have a lot of to be continueds to finish.” 

“I’m looking forward to it.” 

“This better be prefaced with a talk of epic proportions.” 

“Tomorrow,” she reminds him.

Archie has his chin propped on his fist, looking at her with an air amusement. “Leeds, then?” 

“We got to get Chop and Izzy in on this, too.” 

“Don’t want nothing to do with Chop, if I’m honest.” 

Rae drags the extra blanket off his bed, setting up a place to sleep for the night. “Well, that’s too fucking bad, Archie because we’ve got to get Chloe and we need back up. And we’ve got to have a long talk with everyone because we can’t just let summer die.” 

“It is dead.”

“It’s not,” she says a little more fiercely than she means. “We can fix all of this.” 

He’s not sure he believes her and he’s not sure what he’s doing, but he slips down on the floor with her. “Friends come and go, Rae. It happens.” 

“Not good friends. I’ve already lost someone close, I’m not losing anyone else.”

“Finn’s not gone.” 

She rolls over to face him and he’s still gorgeous and she’s glad to have him, glad they didn’t destroy each other in the process of finding who they were. “Her name was Tix.” 

(They stay up too late and in the morning, Archie is sick with nerves and he’s ready to go because it’s never crossed his mind that his friends could die. And when he sees Chop, he doesn’t hesitate to hug him because there are some things you let go and some things you don’t.)


End file.
